


Someone to Pull the Trigger

by pene



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 15:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pene/pseuds/pene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course someone's tied Sherlock up. John would have done it himself but he thought Sherlock was dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someone to Pull the Trigger

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to punk - as ever there's none better, and to AJ Hall who kindly britpicked (and had a ridiculously relevant knowledge of trains in the North West of England).

There are several solid reasons John should move out of the Baker Street flat. They’d all be lumped under sentiment, save one. Without Sherlock he can’t afford the rent. 

Of course, Mrs. Hudson won’t make demands on him, but the thought of her compassion is unbearable. He imagines her saying, “I don’t mind, of course. It’s too awful for the poor dear. It’s just-” while wondering if she can afford to heat her rooms. He couldn’t stomach her freezing to death in the flat below. 

Twenty five minutes after he’s given Mrs. Hudson notice and refused a nice cup of tea for the fourth time, there are footsteps on the stairs. The tread is familiar. For a moment John doesn’t breathe. The door opens to Mycroft. 

“John,” he says. “I do hope I didn’t startle you.”

“Mycroft,” says John, and wipes his hands on his trouser legs. 

Mycroft looks away. He gestures to a small army of assistants at the foot of the stairs. “I thought I could assist.” 

John takes in the assistants’ agreeable faces and latex gloves; their neatly aligned blank boxes. He imagines those latex fingers handling Sherlock’s throw pillows and books and lamp shades and fingernail clippings. 

“No,” he says quietly. “It’s very thoughtful, Mycroft.”

“Not really,” says Mycroft with a narrow smile. “Do leave it with me, John. I anticipate you will find this charge trying. So much material to catalogue; so many memories –“ His voice peters out.

“Thank you. No.” John looks Mycroft in the eye. 

“There’s no advantage in false hopes, John,” says Mycroft eventually.

After Mycroft and his multitude depart John stands for a moment and looks around 221B. There’s clutter on every surface yet the place feels unspeakably empty. 

John is not in fact an idiot. He has as good a chance as anyone of understanding a person after sharing a bathroom, most of London’s cab fleet, and eight near death experiences. (Nine if you count the puffer fish incident. John does). So John’s brain is having trouble grasping something his eyes and hands confirmed for him. 

It’s not that John can’t imagine a world without Sherlock. (He is living in that world. He would prefer not to.) It’s not because Sherlock was too alive or too brilliant or had too much left to do and say and be. It’s that John can’t imagine Sherlock’s massive ego would allow him to deprive the world of his genius. It’s bloody difficult to show off when you’re dead.

In any case the apartment won’t pack itself. John selects a bookshelf at random and begins sorting. He places the books in piles labelled (in his head): kind of useful, not at all useful, utterly barmy. 

Ten minutes later John pulls out a paperback he hasn’t seen before. It’s set between a bound thesis on mineral content in human bone samples and an encyclopaedia of North African poisons. For a fraction John’s hands still.  
Then he puts the book into the useful pile. He continues categorising. If there is any truth to the sudden tightness in his chest he may be being watched.

He finishes the shelf and places the books into boxes. He grabs the paperback and places it on the coffee table ostensibly for future reading. The subtitle reads, “The Story of the Andes Survivors.”

It’s titled, “Alive.” 

It wasn’t there before. And John can’t quite quench the perilous flicker of hope. 

**

He wants to tear the flat apart. He wants to find another absurd clue, and another and another. He wants to find out how and where and fucking why. He thinks he wouldn’t even mind finding nothing, realising that the book is a cruel accident, something Lestrade left while sharing case files and a curry. (Though of course he would mind. It’s hard to breathe with how much he fucking minds.) 

He just wants to be certain.

Unfortunately he’s not one to leap straight from data to inference; he needs to be methodical. 

It takes hours to finish sorting and packing the books. There is no secret message in “100 Walks in the Cheshire Countryside ” or a treatise on managing chronic otitis. John sits and frowns into the horrible quiet. 

The sound of the clock above his head is oddly resonant. Ticktick. Ticktick. John shakes his head clear. He needs a shower.

Everything comes together quite suddenly under the warm flow. John’s theorised before that his brain works best in there. "Thinking time," he said once to Sherlock after bursting into the living room wrapped in a damp towel and with a theory about a spate of Devonshire assaults. 

“All time is thinking time”, said Sherlock without looking up, and proceeded to invalidate everything John had said based on the baking time of scones. 

But today in the shower, it really does become clear. It doesn’t hurt that there is a small bottle of hotel shampoo labelled Alice Park Inn and bearing a grinning cat. 

John scrambles out of the shower and scans the living room. The odd ticking comes from a second clock buried under Sherlock’s cricket whites in the corner of the living room. Two clocks. Cheshire. 

Two clocks is a Lewis Carroll logic puzzle. It is also an abandoned inn in Cheshire. John and Sherlock walked past it in a moment of quiet after the Ingleburn Beard affair. It had been a good day, though Sherlock had dismissed Carroll’s neat little puzzle - time being merely a human construct and not actually having any significance. 

Alive. Two clocks. Cheshire (twice).

The clues are beneath Sherlock’s touch, really. But then, they were intended for John. 

**

“He is gallingly omnipresent,” said Sherlock once, pointedly not looking at the CCTV cameras in Lancaster Gate tube station and meaning Mycroft. “I find it advantageous to give whoever’s watching a rationale for each movement.”

So that day Sherlock had carried a conspicuous good food guide. They’d sat knee to knee in a crowded art deco bar. Sherlock had divided his time between resolving the (clandestine) case awaiting them in Hyde Park and apparently pretending to be John’s boyfriend. John had swallowed foie gras crème brulee and avoided considering his response to Sherlock’s hand skimming his right thigh. 

Yet he’d learned something of subterfuge from Sherlock. 

At Euston station John makes himself dull-eyed, slightly weighed down, a grieving man. After three months he has the muscle memory for it, though under his skin there’s a buzz like he’s back in the war. 

He buys a ticket for Lancaster, where some relatives live (He presumes anyone watching would know). He meanders upstairs, gets caught up staring into the Medicentre, spends eight minutes ultimately deciding not to have a pint. He then looks at his watch and makes a bolt downstairs for the platform. Of course he misses the Lancaster train by seconds. With visible frustration he boards the next train . The train is heading to Glasgow via Preston, twenty miles south 

Inside the carriage he smiles politely at a young mother and her charges, avoids sitting next to a friendly older woman. He looks ordinary but his palms are wet and his heart is beating fast and hard in his chest. 

On its way to Glasgow the train stops in Crewe, Cheshire. John hops off. 

**

The Two Clocks has been empty for years. John shoves the door of the bar room. It scrapes against the stone floor and the sound echoes through the room. John slides in. He pulls his gun from the waistband of his jeans and waits for his eyes to adjust to the low light. Someone is sitting between an upturned table and the far wall. He lifts his head as John enters. John has already recognised him, of course.

“Oh good, John, you made it,” says Sherlock. 

John briefly considers punching him, but Sherlock is still talking and is noticeably and infuriatingly alive. “Untie me,” Sherlock says. He pushes his chin in the air as though he can point to his hands bound behind his back. 

“Of course” John says automatically. He means of course I’ll untie you but also of course you’re alive and of course someone’s bloody well tied you up, I’d have done it myself but I thought you were dead. 

“Are they still here?” He scans the room again. 

“Long gone,” huffs Sherlock impatiently. “Now do hurry, John.”

“Right,” says John, securing his gun in his waistband but not moving closer. “Right.” 

He looks at Sherlock. He’s the same slouching long-limbed dickhead with yet another bruise on his extraordinary cheekbones. 

“Fuck,” John breathes. “Right-- you’re going to hear me out.” 

“John,” Sherlock protests. 

“No,” says John. He runs a hand through his hair. “There are things you need to hear and I’m not going to repeat myself so for once you can just stay quiet and listen.”

Sherlock complies, which may be more surprising than Sherlock being alive. 

“You’re alive,” John says. He watches Sherlock battle not to say ‘obvious’ and roll his eyes. 

“I assume there’s a reason for this whole performance. Your death. Mrs. Hudson and Molly and Lestrade crying at your grave. You’ll say it was the work. That this is some kind of war; that death is a part of that. I know war and I know I can survive it, maybe better than most. But I watched you jump off a building. And it didn’t feel like war. I watched you jump; I watched you die. There wasn’t anything to fight. You near as fuck broke my heart, Sherlock.”

“Stop John, that’s just imbecilic. You’re a doctor. The heart muscle is not associated with-”

“Please shut up. I’m not letting you dismiss this. Not this. Every single time a door opened, it was never you. Every time I got a text, at least until I turned my phone off. Every wanker in a preposterous overcoat, every posh git slumped in a restaurant, every tosser in danger. Not one of them was you. And I’ve spent three months trying to stop myself hoping it would be.”

“It is me now, John.” Sherlock’s voice is low.

John is full to breaking point with joy and anger. He clamps it down. “Yeah, I’m not sure that’s better.” He sighs. “Let’s get you out of here.”

**

Sherlock is still as John finally approaches and kneels to untie him. This experience is not a new one. He has already anticipated (coveted) John’s swift intake of breath as he observes the bloodied state of Sherlock’s wrists. He is familiar with the capable touch of John’s fingers. John smells like London (cabs, curry, smoke, damp air, humans) and trains (sweat, fruit juice, shoes, perfume, diesel) and John (relief). 

“How long have you been tied here?” asks John. 

“Three hours and twenty eight minutes.”

“Sherlock,” says John, his voice a pleasing combination of frustration and sympathy. “You should have told me you were hurt.”

“It seemed optimal to let you continue,” says Sherlock.

Sherlock knows of twelve equations for John’s happiness. A rescue plus the opportunity to read Sherlock a lecture plus Sherlock’s pain (presumably if not requiring immediate medical attention) should cheer John up no end. Sherlock’s arranged a proper dinner later, which should guarantee success. 

Once untied, Sherlock stands. He’s pleased to find his legs support him with minimal teetering.

John stands too. “Damn it,” he says. He’s looking at Sherlock with clear eyes. “You complete fucker. I thought I’d never see you again.” 

He moves forward swiftly, all competence and trigger fingers on Sherlock’s wrists, and takes Sherlock with him against the wall. 

Sherlock has a fraction of a second to think. (He thinks: Oh. And he thinks: Now this is novel.) Then John kisses him. There’s brickwork against Sherlock’s back and John’s body (careful, unyielding) at his front. Without them Sherlock wonders if he would collapse to the floor in some sort of histrionic swoon. Instead he opens his mouth to John, brings a hand up to wrap around John’s neck and pulls John toward him. 

“What are you even doing here?” John asks against Sherlock’s jaw. 

Sherlock considers providing the literal truth, but that will take too long. “Waiting for you,” he says. Then because John deserves the beginnings of an explanation, “I’ve tracked down the source of some payments that were an inconvenience. Assassins, and the like. But we have a way to go to wrap up Moriarty’s web.” 

“We,” says John. Sherlock recognises the sentiment in that. He leans down to kiss John more. (liquefaction, fusion, chemistry, electricity – no that’s ridiculous not electricity, just nerve endings, thousands upon thousands of nerve endings.)

Their bodies are pressed into one another when John suddenly stills. It’s certainly not the time to be ending anything. Sherlock looks down in irritation. 

John presses two fingers to Sherlock’s lips. “Shush,” he says as though Sherlock is the kind of individual who needs things repeated. “There’s a car outside. Were you expecting someone?”

Sherlock sighs. “Not important. They’ve just come back to finish what they started.”

“And they are?”

“Local crime family.”

“Here?” John sounds incredulous. Sherlock can’t imagine why he would be surprised that even criminals in country Cheshire organise their activities.

“Some drug manufacture – disappointingly low quality. A bit of bribery and intimidation. Nothing of consequence.”

“You just had to piss them off, I guess.” John sounds both exasperated and proud, which is by and large how John sounds when dealing with Sherlock. 

Sherlock shrugs in a way that is hopefully eloquent. He was enjoying kissing John and would rather go back to that. 

John appeared to have other plans. “Okay, get behind the bar,” he says.

“John-“

“The bar, Sherlock. I just got you back. I’m not having you shot by amateurs.”

“It would be better if I resumed my position in the chair, John. Element of surprise.”

John takes a breath and nods. Sherlock is pleased that sentiment and arousal haven’t clouded his tactical judgement. 

John pulls his gun from his waistband, checks the cartridge with competent hands. His eyes are fixed on Sherlock. Sherlock smiles. John’s grin in return is like a bright promise. He kisses Sherlock once more, hard and fast.

** 

When it’s over (one broken hand, two cracked ribs, no actual shooting; which is faintly disappointing except that it’s far easier to clean up when the antagonists can run away) John says, breathlessly, “What now?”

“I have dinner spoken for at 7 just down the road."

John looks at his watch and frowns. “How... convenient. You knew that I’d be here now?”

“Approximately.”

“And that I’d have forgiven you.” 

“That’s what we’re calling it are we?” says Sherlock. Then, seriously, “I counted on it, yes.” Taking into consideration all the variables of John’s personality (loyalty; craving for future danger; kindness), forgiveness had seemed the most plausible outcome. Which didn’t explain the fear (staggeringly persistent) that John would simply turn and leave. 

“Did you- Sherlock you didn’t plan for that, to be tied up when I arrived, to have the Noonan family stop by.”

“No. That was an unexpected bonus.”

John rolls his eyes expressively. 

Sherlock says, “Additionally, don’t be taken aback if people in the village call me Prometheus.”

“Fair enough. That’s an... alibi?” says John.

“Yes, of course. I ensured the publican owed me a favour. I needed an assumed name.”

“And you chose Prometheus. Do you have a last name?”

“Flint.” Sherlock says and John starts to giggle. “It was a choice made at random eight months ago. I needed to arrange a place of safety.”

“Tell me there aren’t multiple places where people call you Prometheus Flint.”

“No,” says Sherlock testily. (Magnus Opington in Potterton, Wellesley Wesley in Forest Row, Crispin Temper in Llandsyul, Hyperion Solomon in Cardinham. The names hardly matter.) 

John laughs, looking up at him. “So,” he says, “I just have to warn you, I’m not going to be able to call you Prometheus in bed.” Sherlock freezes for a moment. 

“John-” he says and his voice is not his own. 

“Not planning on taking things that far?” asks John mildly. 

“That was-- not even slightly what I was going to say.”

“Good,” John says.

“I might be a danger to you,” says Sherlock in a rush. 

“You think I haven’t noticed?” says John his eyes alight with amusement and something deeper. Sherlock smiles (wants to kiss John again, is convinced he’s showing too much of his hand, has a conjecture about the whereabouts of a Moriarty linked Swiss banker, is concerned about an ongoing experiment at 221B). John, though, John pulls Sherlock close to him for a kiss. “Do your worst,” he says, smiling against Sherlock’s lips. 

It stops Sherlock’s breath, if not his thoughts. John is brave and single minded - two of a thousand reasons he is stupid and perfect (stupidly perfect). 


End file.
